If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Canonical Puts Out A Hardware List, But It Falls Short

Phoronix: Canonical Puts Out A Hardware List, But It Falls Short

Canonical has announced this morning they have released the "world's most comprehensive, up-to-date component catalog for Linux." It's effectively a hardware database showing components they have tested. It's interesting, but of course I have more than a few comments on the matter with some constructive criticism...

I like the idea of distribution teams collaborating with other projects such as Phoronix and the hardware database at openbenchmarking.org. Whether or not this type of collaboration exists for various distributions could be an important differentiator among them. Obviously it is important for companies to keep track of this type of information as Canonical has shown by their initial efforts, so why not tap in to the work that has already been done by other projects that are hoping to expand the communication of such information?

While it's easy to look at the information in this article and see that, based on the comparisons shown Phoronix has more information collected. I think it's highly unlikely Canonical has collected more information and reviews on hardware than what will eventually be found at openbenchmarking.org. But I think a big question is how would that information be made available to such organizations or projects, like Canonical? I may have missed this conversation in the past, but will there be an API for accessing the database of information at openbenchmarking.org? I can't imagine someone like Canonical not jumping at the chance to expand on the amount of information available to their users if that information is high quality and easily accessible.

But I think a big question is how would that information be made available to such organizations or projects, like Canonical? I may have missed this conversation in the past, but will there be an API for accessing the database of information at openbenchmarking.org? I can't imagine someone like Canonical not jumping at the chance to expand on the amount of information available to their users if that information is high quality and easily accessible.

Yep, there will be an API. It's already planned and partially developed, but won't be available at launch... If Canonical or any other major vendor wanted to get behind OpenBenchmarking.org, that could speed up things, as right now there's only so much time in the day for me to code PTS and OpenBenchmarking.org while still churning out all of the Phoronix content.

I've got a joke for you:

One day, Canonical launched an online hardware compatibility list. They issue a press release.
OMGUbuntu makes an article titled "Canonical launch list of Ubuntu-compatible PC components"
Phoronix makes an article called "Canonical Puts Out A Hardware List, But It Falls Short and Makes Babies Cry"
And finally slashdot aggregates an article titled "Linus Torvalds eaten by bear" with a link to a comment under an article linkspamming another article about the original press release.

..then the statistician says "whatever happened today, it must have been terrible"

One day, Canonical launched an online hardware compatibility list. They issue a press release.
OMGUbuntu makes an article titled "Canonical launch list of Ubuntu-compatible PC components"
Phoronix makes an article called "Canonical Puts Out A Hardware List, But It Falls Short and Makes Babies Cry"
And finally slashdot aggregates an article titled "Linus Torvalds eaten by bear" with a link to a comment under an article linkspamming another article about the original press release.

..then the statistician says "whatever happened today, it must have been terrible"

LOL

Michael, you're right... time will say which HW DB will dominate the world
Or maybe Canonical concentrates on whole PCs and you on single HW devices.
Or maybe you join forces... who knows
Nice job , though

Yeah.
Canonical is just big mouth - crying a lot and doing nothing.
This is why I prefer Gentoo/Debian/Mint anyday over it.
They have money to implement the structures able to boost linux so much, but this project(ubuntu) is just a hobby for Mark, an additional source of income.
Humanity is when bunch of newbies send bugs they are unable to formulate, understand or solve, but every single of them is happy how being together is great. If they'd stick together and pay some RH or Novell developer (who actually do something for linux, not "ubuntu") instead they would achive way more.

I feel this article completely misses the point of Ubuntu announcement.
Yes, I agree openbenchmarking got probably more devices/information etc. But it shows tests results. Whether something works, works partially or doesn't work.

Ubuntu site is for _certified_ hardware. What do they mean by that remains unknown to me, whether there is some formal test plan to announce a piece of HW certified (maybe it's mentioned somewhere, I'm not bothered to check). The idea is simply to check: ok, this HW is safe, I'm guaranteed it will work. With this approach it's obvious that canonical's list will be less comprehensive. It has to be, that's the point.

So you can't compare those two cause ideas standing behind them are completely different.

"Though not to serve as an advertisement for OpenBenchmarking.org"

That's exactly what you've been trying to do throughout this article. I think I'm really getting tired of completely unprofessional journalism presented on this page.

Right now it looks like it may do a sufficient job for someone that just wants to know if an off-the-shelf PC will work with Ubuntu Linux, but for anyone else, it will fall short.

But that's exactly what they want to achieve, nothing more. It's like discrediting arcade game that's it's not a simulator.